BigDinFL, basically you are saying that it is perfectly within your rights to:

A) Sell a gun to an 11 year old, from across town who answered your add because he was being bullied at school and wanted "protection"

b) Sell a gun to ex-con who is loaded with prison tattoos, sporting his gang colors and bragging about the crap he has done and hopes to do.

c) Sell a gun to your neighbor who you KNOW beats his wife and has threatened to kill her.

d) Sell a gun to the neighborhood nut who walks around town having intense arguments with himself and threatens anybody who approaches.

etc....

If a person does any of the above, to my mind there should be consequences. I don't have a good balanced solution to this problem but am participating in this discussion with the hopes of finding such a solution. So for myself, I will continue to transfer through an FFL.

What a bunch of strawman BS due - let's come back to reality.

You must not remember the days when folks put ads in the paper with their home number and address and folks came over with cash and bought whatever you were selling - I do, it was NO BIG DEAL. I have sold guns at garage sales (and bought some too) where we didn't even exchange first names, let alone our entire history.

YOU are free to do it anyway you want, but trying to state that we should ALL do it YOUR way or face criminal charges IS acting like Bloomberg and wanting a nanny state

This is NOT something that should be anywhere near being handled at the Federal level - NO social issue is. We need this tyranny to grow smaller, not larger with more impediments in peoples' lives to do what they want with their property

This is NOT something that should be anywhere near being handled at the Federal level - NO social issue is.

__________________Tomorrow is the most important thing in life. Comes into us at midnight very clean. It's perfect when it arrives and it puts itself in our hands. It hopes we've learned something from yesterday.

The CRA and it most of it's follow ups were written to ensure that people have the necessaries in life (education, housing, employment, basic services etc) and not are not to be denied them for discriminatory reasons.

I personally believe that the tools for self defense (arms) are also a necessary and should not be denied without just cause. Therefore obtaining them should not be subject to discrimination (of course most of us know the history of arms control in the US has a long, long racial/ cultural background).

I think if you believe that you can discriminate on who you sell you guns to than you would have to accept it is not truly an essential right.

A person can legally refuse to rent an apartment to a pregnant (family status and sex), paraplegic (disability), Japanese (national origin), Ainu (race), Shinto (religion) with a pet goat ... as long as the refusal is based on discriminating between renters with or without goats. By your logic, legal discrimination has occurred, so housing "is not truly an essential right."

I would not sell a gun to a person with gang tats (think MS13). Yes, I would discriminate on the basis of tattoos, which is not legally prohibited. And that discrimination would not reflect in the least on whether the RKBA is or is not an essential right.

A person can legally refuse to rent an apartment to a pregnant (family status and sex), paraplegic (disability), Japanese (national origin), Ainu (race), Shinto (religion) with a pet goat ... as long as the refusal is based on discriminating between renters with or without goats. By your logic, legal discrimination has occurred, so housing "is not truly an essential right."

That is not discrimination. A goat is personal property can be gotten rid of. Walking again or converting to Hinduism is another thing entirely. Now if you were a goat worshiper or married to one the court might have to hear your argument. (this is a farcical argument purely for humor).

No civil rights are granted based on status of pet ownership.

Quote:

I would not sell a gun to a person with gang tats (think MS13). Yes, I would discriminate on the basis of tattoos, which is not legally prohibited. And that discrimination would not reflect in the least on whether the RKBA is or is not an essential right.

That might very well be a wise thing to do. The tattoos might be an indicator of felonious behavior or they could be the battle scars of a lost and misguided youth. You have no way of knowing so it would be prudent.

__________________Tomorrow is the most important thing in life. Comes into us at midnight very clean. It's perfect when it arrives and it puts itself in our hands. It hopes we've learned something from yesterday.

You must not remember the days when folks put ads in the paper with their home number and address and folks came over with cash and bought whatever you were selling - I do, it was NO BIG DEAL. I have sold guns at garage sales (and bought some too) where we didn't even exchange first names, let alone our entire history.

So... clearly you exercise good judgement and therefore should not need to perform any additional due diligence. You do realize that your words represent a very strong case for universal background check requirements?

Taking this a step further.... as judgement is clearly not universal and there are already laws on the books, what methods are available to ensure that individuals don't sell to the prohibited?

Ah, win-lose, you must be an "anti" as well. If only I could remember the secret handshake, how does it go?

__________________Tomorrow is the most important thing in life. Comes into us at midnight very clean. It's perfect when it arrives and it puts itself in our hands. It hopes we've learned something from yesterday.

Ah, win-lose, you must be an "anti" as well. If only I could remember the secret handshake, how does it go?

It is unfortunate, but I think some here may view me as such...

In reality, I'm doing the best I can... I'm writing letters, going to rallies, donating to organizations, losing friends - all to protect my, and more importantly, my kid's constitutional rights. This is consuming most of my free time and much of my emotional energy. Unfortunately, as with any issue, there are elements that have a lot of "grey". It's these grey areas that I'm trying to work out in my head, through discussions in threads like this....

In reality, I'm doing the best I can... I'm writing letters, going to rallies, donating to organizations, losing friends - all to protect my, and more importantly, my kid's constitutional rights. This is consuming most of my free time and much of my emotional energy. Unfortunately, as with any issue, there are elements that have a lot of "grey". It's these grey areas that I'm trying to work out in my head, through discussions in threads like this....

If it makes you feel any better I am guessing you are doing more than 95% of the tomato throwers.

__________________Tomorrow is the most important thing in life. Comes into us at midnight very clean. It's perfect when it arrives and it puts itself in our hands. It hopes we've learned something from yesterday.

Yes, making a distinction is the very definition of discrimination. And that gets to the point that you have used the word "discrimination" somewhat indiscriminately when you probably meant "illegal discrimination based on a prohibited basis" rather than simply making a distinction.

So... clearly you exercise good judgement and therefore should not need to perform any additional due diligence. You do realize that your words represent a very strong case for universal background check requirements?

Taking this a step further.... as judgement is clearly not universal and there are already laws on the books, what methods are available to ensure that individuals don't sell to the prohibited?

So if we go back a little further in time - pre 68 GCA when there were no FFLs, let alone checks and folks ordered guns from magazines delivered to their homes, even at 16, where was all of this lib concern? No school shootings, even though kids brought guns to school all the time, no need for any checks, yet society was very safe and secure.

Keep the Feds out of our personal business, no matter what it is - especially social issues. There has never been a social issue program "helped" by the fed involvement that was ever worth having - every single program has been a failure with cost overruns, unintended consequences and restrictions, one size fits all mentality that fits no one and solves nothing. This becomes a mere step to total confiscation - except for the criminals - and I include the elected politicians in that group

People accept that the federal government has not made the prosecution of prohibited persons attempting to buy, or of straw purchases a priority because, in Biden's words there is no time for that;

People accept that universal checks could be abused, and used to set up a national registry;

People accept that in Chicago, such a system has already been used for confiscation in the past, and that in New York, they have implicitly threatened such a possibility in future (so we don't even need to look at the UK and Australia);

People have heard from FFLs that the system, as it is, is overloaded and that adding to it will bog down or break the system;

And yet those people still not only favor universal background checks, but they can't understand why they would be perceived as offering aid to the antis, from within our tent?

Taking this a step further.... as judgement is clearly not universal and there are already laws on the books, what methods are available to ensure that individuals don't sell to the prohibited?

Laws do not ensure, guarantee, or prevent anything ever.

Are you ever going to get this concept? Or do you disagree?

If laws actually prevented crime, we would have no crime.

Laws are a guide for the law abiding and a justification to punish the law breaker. But they do not stop anything. In fact, you can not stop these acts. You can't do it, it can't be done. At least not in a free society.

There are however numerous science fiction stories/movies which leverage the idea that if government exercises absolute control, and the population can be coerced or co-opted into submission, then you can get pretty damn close.

I don't recall anyone who watched those shows thinking the people were getting a really good deal out of it all.

Quote:
Taking this a step further.... as judgement is clearly not universal and there are already laws on the books, what methods are available to ensure that individuals don't sell to the prohibited?
Laws do not ensure, guarantee, or prevent anything ever.

Are you ever going to get this concept? Or do you disagree?

If laws actually prevented crime, we would have no crime.

Laws are a guide for the law abiding and a justification to punish the law breaker. But they do not stop anything. In fact, you can not stop these acts. You can't do it, it can't be done. At least not in a free society.

Before calling someone foolish, perhaps you should read what they wrote. I asked "... what METHODS are available to ensure that individuals don't sell to the prohibited?" Requiring the use of a method would be a law, the method is the means. Now, if you don't feel that you have a responsibility to not sell to prohibited individuals, then say so.

As to methods...
We currently have NICS which seems to have been pretty effective at preventing FFL's from DIRECTLY selling to the prohibited. There are clearly laws supporting this system that need to be enforced. If the FFL system can be expanded/staffed to support the additional load, without firearm registration (beyond the FFL's book), with fee schedules that FFL's will be able to effectively participate and perhaps tax credits for those that use the FFL transfer, we may have a workable system. To my mind, getting prohibited individuals to participate only in the black market will go a long way to put the burden of enforcement on the feds and away from us.

Like it or not, we have a very real argument ahead of us on universal background checks. When this argument is separated from all other items under consideration, we need to be able to be persuasive, on a logical level, to those who do not have the passion for the issue that we do. To date, I have not seen a single Pro Gun person being interviewed that has handled this question well. This discredits the rest of our positions because most of the population see's this as intuitively "reasonable" and without a persuasive argument, we are seen as unreasonable. So the challenge is to construct an argument that a middle of the road person (non-gunnie / non-anti) would accept as reasonable for not implementing universal background checks.

And that gets to the point that you have used the word "discrimination" somewhat indiscriminately when you probably meant "illegal discrimination based on a prohibited basis" rather than simply making a distinction.

Holy outofcontextalization batman! Were you paying attention to any part of the conversation? You understand that words have more than one meaning right? That in order to understand what they mean you have to read them within the context of the conversation? We were not for example talking about how to discriminate variables in a science experiment right?

__________________Tomorrow is the most important thing in life. Comes into us at midnight very clean. It's perfect when it arrives and it puts itself in our hands. It hopes we've learned something from yesterday.

There are clearly laws supporting this system that need to be enforced.

Yep, and we can start by arresting criminals who attempt to buy guns. This is one thing I agree with Bloomberg on.

The problem with NICS is that we convinced ourselves of the need for it. Is there a drop in violent crime that can be associated with it? Nope. Folks just thought it was a good idea, just like some folks think banning 30-round magazines is a good idea.

The Republic survived just fine for 219 years without a background-check system for firearms purchases.

__________________
Sometimes it’s nice not to destroy the world for a change.
--Randall Munroe

They will eventually add a tax to the private sale of guns then continue raising it to further discourage gun ownership.

Keep on mind that "taxes" are just about the only tool the government has. So of course that's how they will do it.

Remember when Social Security was passed the government was busy telling the people "this isn't a tax" to sell the bill while at the same time arguing in front of the Supreme Court that "it's just a tax" to defend the lawsuit.

Remember Obamacare is legal because "it's just a tax" instead of a compulsion.

Holy outofcontextalization batman! Were you paying attention to any part of the conversation? You understand that words have more than one meaning right? That in order to understand what they mean you have to read them within the context of the conversation? We were not for example talking about how to discriminate variables in a science experiment right?

Here is what you wrote.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Alabama Shooter

The CRA and it most of it's follow ups were written to ensure that people have the necessaries in life (education, housing, employment, basic services etc) and not are not to be denied them for discriminatory reasons.

I personally believe that the tools for self defense (arms) are also a necessary and should not be denied without just cause. Therefore obtaining them should not be subject to discrimination (of course most of us know the history of arms control in the US has a long, long racial/ cultural background).

I think if you believe that you can discriminate on who you sell you guns to than you would have to accept it is not truly an essential right.

Your idea that legally prohibited discrimination is based on necessities of life and that legal discrimination in private affairs reflects something less than an essential right is simply wrong.

Discrimination is legally prohibited when it involves state supported activities or public establishments. The "right" that is protected by the Civil Rights Act(s) is generally the right to equal access, opportunities or treatment involving things that are supposedly equally available to all. If a person goes into a store to buy the most trivial item and is turned away on a prohibited basis (race, sex, color, etc.), that refusal constitutes legally prohibited discrimination because the person was not treated fairly and equally with others, and not due to the nature of the item the person wanted to buy.

The problem with NICS is that we convinced ourselves of the need for it. Is there a drop in violent crime that can be associated with it? Nope.

Tom, I think we really need to be careful in presenting this argument as we will fall into the trap of making a case for registration (ie: we need better visibility in order gauge the effectiveness of our controls).

To my mind, this subject is our achilles heal. If we don't successfully argue it, either pro with limited scope or against, it will be expanded into a significant threat (registration).

AS - since you mentioned rentals and background checks and fair housing...

Re: a universal background check...
Why? Why do you want to run one? Is it to keep guns out of the hands of felons & crazies or is it because you don't want to assume a legal or moral responsibility for their actions? - this is an either or question, not a "both".

W/regard to rentals..

Say a prospective tenant applied to rent my house. Frank.
He's a single father with a teenage child. Frank Jr.

Should I be allowed to deny the house to him because he has a teen age child?
I can run a background check on him, but, not the teen age child since those records aren't available.

What happens if his teen age child breaks the law? Should I , as a landlord, be responsible for that child's actions?
What if the crime is committed, say, 250 feet away from the property line and in a public park?
Should I still be held liable?

Now, let's say you sell a gun to Frank. Frank has a clean record and passes the check no problem.
Frank's teen age kid , Frank Jr. is a different story. That little delinquent has been in trouble for years.
Should you still be legally or morally responsible if Frank Jr. busts open the gun safe and shoots up the neighborhood?

Heck, I'll even go you one further....

If Frank and Frank Jr. live in my rental house, should I be responsible for the little creep getting his hands on a gun and blazing away at the neighborhood?

Before calling someone foolish, perhaps you should read what they wrote.

No Win-Lose, you made the mistake. I said the concept was foolish and asked when you would come to that realization.

From your arguments it sounds as though "something must be done".

I am arguing that nothing must be done and that already too much has been done to no effect.

This is because of this same foolish concept that you can make the world safe with laws. It's just stupid. If this were the case murder would have ceased the moment Moses unveiled God's Ten Commandments, or surely after Charlton Heston took them to the big screen.

It is already against the law to kill people without cause.
It is already against the law for a prohibited possessor to have a gun.
It is already against the law to knowingly sell a gun to a prohibited possessor.

But trying to make it impossible for a prohibited possessor to obtain a weapon is foolish because you just can't do it. You can only punish them for it if you catch them at it.

Before I get off into this, let me clarify something. Earlier there was some business about whether or not I believed that you supported a new AWB or something about the NFA. I reviewed my posts and don't think I was the one who said you supported renewing/expanding/etc. those things. Just to make it clear for the record: I'm not saying that you support those things.

I still think the CRA and impermissible discrimination is a derailment, but if you want to hash this out here, that's fine.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Alabama Shooter

Quote:

Originally Posted by Spats McGee

Alabama Shooter, I think where you're getting tripped up is the distinction between civil rights and constitutional rights, and the distinction between whether a man has a right, and whether I, acting as an individual, am capable of violating it. I have not gone back and re-read my previous posts this morning, but I may be partially to blame for that confusion, as I was perhaps not as clear as I could have been. In the interest of not derailing this thread any further, though, I'd like to move on to another topic. I may start another thread to address the other issues.

It is not a derailment. It is essential to the topic. The CRA and it most of it's follow ups were written to ensure that people have the necessaries in life (education, housing, employment, basic services etc) and not are not to be denied them for discriminatory reasons.

I personally believe that the tools for self defense (arms) are also a necessary and should not be denied without just cause. Therefore obtaining them should not be subject to discrimination (of course most of us know the history of arms control in the US has a long, long racial/ cultural background).

I think if you believe that you can discriminate on who you sell you guns to than you would have to accept it is not truly an essential right.

Agree or disagree? No need to get shaky knees and equivocate here. The question is pretty straight forward.

No shaky knees here. You haven't asked a single question with which I can simply agree or disagree. You've muddled two questions together and confounded two separate issues: (1) what I should do; and (2) what I legally can do. I'll break down your questions to illustrate. Going back to the first example of the private trasaction, in which the buyer is a member of a protected class:

Quote:

Originally Posted by Alabama Shooter

Tell Frank you won't sell him the gun because he is Hispanic or Muslim. Watch Frank sue you for whatever he thinks he can get.

From a later post:

Quote:

Originally Posted by Alabama Shooter

Now that you are NOT running a gun shop but that you simply offered a gun for sale (say an online ad). You are not acting as an agent for a business. Just you. If you offer and he accepts now you must sell regardless of whatever misgivings you might have if this protected activity right?

The "offer and acceptance" language that you've included implicates contract rights separate and apart from civil rights under the 2A and the CRA of 1968. For the purposes of narrowing the discussion, let's disregard potential contract law implications. Otherwise, we may never get through this.

The underlined section indicates to me that you believe that I cannot legally decline to sell a person my firearm based solely on his race or religion, as that would violate his civil rights under the CRA or the 2A. Is that a correct understanding?

My contention is that I, acting only as an idividual, can legally decline to sell under those circumstances, without violating his civil rights under the CRA, or the US Constitution.

Now, let's look at a couple of other quotes from your last post:

Quote:

Originally Posted by Alabama Shooter

I personally believe that the tools for self defense (arms) are also a necessary and should not be denied without just cause. Therefore obtaining them should not be subject to discrimination (of course most of us know the history of arms control in the US has a long, long racial/ cultural background).

I entirely agree. In the above scenario, I should not decline to sell a person my firearm, based solely on race, gender, or religion. That would be wrong.

However, statements of "should" and "should not" indicate judgments of value, of right and wrong, better and worse. The law does not generally deal in "shoulds." It deals in "shalls," "shall nots," "mays," and "musts." It tells us what we may and may not do, what we must and mustn't do, but not what we should or should not do.

Your other statement is not a statement of "should," though. It's a statement of "can," by which I presume you mean "can do so legally," not "whether Spats is physically capable of" declining to sell.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Alabama Shooter

I think if you believe that you can discriminate on who you sell you guns to than you would have to accept it is not truly an essential right.

This question is separate from what I should do. This is a question of what I legally can do. Acting as a private individual, without holding myself out as a public business, can I legally decline to sell to a man just because of his race? Yes.
Assuming this man is not prohibited:
Does that man have a 2A right? Yes.
Does he have a right to purchase a firearm? Yes.
Does he have a right to purchase my firearm? No.
Do I have a right to dispose of my own personal property? Yes.
Does he have a right to purchase my firearm, sufficient to trump my right to dispose of my property? No.

The CRA was enacted in 1968 to protect minorities from discrimination in matters made available to the public at large, and state or governmental matters. Voting, housing, public facilities. (I seem to recall a case invovling the Howard Johnson's line of hotels and restaurants, for example.) In discrimination law, there are several protected classes (race, religion, gender, age, for example) and protected activities (voting, public facilities, education, housing, and employment for example). The private purchase of firearms, from private individuals, is not included in the list. If we were talking about the purchase of a firearm from a store, held out to the public for public business, that would be a different story. The CRA was not enacted in such a way that it protects from purely private discrimination. Whether or not it should have been is an entirely separate question. Whether I believe the 2A is an "essential right," does not enter into the equation.

The 2A right, on the other hand, was enumerated at the end of the 18th century, but that right, RKBA, is not listed in the CRA. So it's not covered by that. Bear in mind, though, that the 2A wasn't even incorporated to the states until 2010, IIRC. In other words, SCOTUS hadn't even told states that the 2A applied to them until 2A. Just because a provision is in the US Constitution does not automatically mean that it applies to the States. As it stands now, though, it has finally been incorporated, which means that States must comply with it. That means that State are now limited in what laws they may enact in restricting the RKBA. It does not mean that private individuals may be forced to sell their private property to other private individuals.

__________________
A gunfight is not the time to learn new skills.

If you ever have a real need for more than a couple of magazines, your problem is not a shortage of magazines. It's a shortage of people on your side of the argument. -- Art Eatman

Before calling someone foolish, perhaps you should read what they wrote.
No Win-Lose, you made the mistake. I said the concept was foolish and asked when you would come to that realization.

From your arguments it sounds as though "something must be done".

I am arguing that nothing must be done and that already too much has been done to no effect.

This is because of this same foolish concept that you can make the world safe with laws. It's just stupid. If this were the case murder would have ceased the moment Moses unveiled God's Ten Commandments, or surely after Charlton Heston took them to the big screen.

It is already against the law to kill people without cause.
It is already against the law for a prohibited possessor to have a gun.
It is already against the law to knowingly sell a gun to a prohibited possessor.

But trying to make it impossible for a prohibited possessor to obtain a weapon is foolish because you just can't do it. You can only punish them for it if you catch them at it.

Your arguments will not persuade anyone... if anything, it sounds like you are arguing for anarchy, which is the last thing our side needs to be doing. Like it or not, this is a very real fight. You can pound your chest and call every thing/one foolish or you can contribute substance. Without a sound argument against back-ground checks, we will need a sound argument for limiting its scope to not include registration.

Again, to date, I have not heard one persuasive argument from ANY figurehead against background checks. Most completely evade answering the question posed. This is very dangerous. I see the purpose of this thread to attempt to produce such arguments.

Tom, I think we really need to be careful in presenting this argument as we will fall into the trap of making a case for registration (ie: we need better visibility in order gauge the effectiveness of our controls).

Not really. Like I said, we went for over 200 years without background checks. Society didn't crumble. There's no proof that the NICS system reduced crime.

As such, expanding it to cover everybody results in huge outlays in terms of infrastructure. That means taxpayer money, and a lot of it. All that would be for naught if proponents have no proof it'll do any good.

And the burden of proof should be on those proposing it, not on us.

Though I have no idea where they got this number, the anti-gun crowd is crowing that 40% of guns are purchased at gun shows without background checks. Let's accept that figure for the moment.

Less than 1% of crime guns are acquired at gun shows, whereas 13% of crime guns are purchased at retailers. By that logic, the NICS system makes us less safe.

OK, maybe that's a bit loopy (and a bit snarky, sue me), but I'm not seeing the problem that universal checks are going to fix.

__________________
Sometimes it’s nice not to destroy the world for a change.
--Randall Munroe

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